Wednesday, July 05, 2006

I was reading Stephe's post on squatty potties and I started to comment on what she wrote. Well, my response was so long that I thought it would make a good topic to post. So I am shamelessly copying one of my favorite blogs Georgia Danette.

I encountered my first squatty potty while I was in Russia a few years ago. Somehow I always thought it was going to be really gross ... but actually it was fairly clean. A bunch of us were at a restaurant and when I got up to find the washroom, 3 others from our group got up to go too. We got to the bathroom and we realized we were going to have to use the squatties for the first time. Well, there were short swinging saloon-type doors on each stall but they were really only big enough to hide your unclothed areas – so basically from the waist up there was no door. There were 4 stalls facing each other. When we realized that we could see each other squatting we all started roaring laughing. We were all new at this and to have someone directly across from you doing the same thing well, it was so freekin’ hilarious that we could barely get the job done.

Speaking of bathrooms, I also learned something else about toilets in Russia. I was at the GUM, a very high end shopping plaza in Red Square where I made my way to the washrooms. They had regular toilets here but they had no seat and no toilet paper – but there were actual stall doors. The doors had no lock but they managed to stay closed anyways for some reason. When it was my turn I had an awful time keeping the door from swinging (outward) and squatting at the same time. It was only when I came out to wash my hands that I learned what the locals do. They put their hands at the bottom of the door to hold the door shut which helps them also maintain their squatty position! Pretty interesting eh?

Well, you have to be positioned just so ...with your legs open and your tush as low as possible ... like an excersise squat - as if you were sitting on an invisible chair. Imagine you were in a yukky gas station bathroom - you'd have to assume the "hover" position as to not let your butt touch the (yukky) seat. ;o)

So here's for being lady-like.... I am a TOTAL pro at standing straight upright - don't even need to bend my knees at all. Great aim, no mess at all. I will have no problem with the squatty potty thing.Now the whole germ thing...that's another story....

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Hi, I'm Julie (creative, verbose, chocaholic) married to Stephan (aka: Hockey Dad). We have 2 great kids through adoption; Francis b: 29/01/01 adopted from Kemerovo, Russia in 2002 and Naomi b: 21/10/06 adopted from Guizhou, China in 2007.This blog started out as our journey to our daughter but has morphed into a blog about our life as a family.